American Liberalism and the Democratic Party

American liberalism wasn't just about social issues like gay marriage and immigration. American liberalism was the closest thing Americans had to the movements in Europe and elsewhere: they promoted economic equality, fair tax systems, labor representation and economic democracy. Europeans labeled them democratic socialism, or social democracy. In the US, we rarely used such terms; they smacked of Socialism, even Communism.

European democratic socialism had its base in political parties either affiliated with, or a part of, the labor movement. Labor in the US has been closer to Democrats than Republicans, at least since FDR, but the Democrats were never a labor party. Since Clinton's "new Democrats," it has become increasingly pro-business and lukewarm to labor.

Somewhere between Carter and Clinton, Democrats pretty much jettisoned economic democracy in favor of campaign funds, and found they could successfully appeal to middle class voters with social arguments like: gay rights, civil rights and pro-choice policies. That left them free to take more pro-business and even pro-wealthy class positions that would make it easier to raise campaign funds, enabling them to win elections.

The Rooseveltian idea that Democrats should strive for economic rights, like Freedom from Want was shoved aside: rich people gave money, the middle class voted for Democrats, the poor didn't turn out to vote in any great numbers--and most of them voted for Democrats, anyway, so they would get the crumbs--and the rhetoric.

Dividing off economic democracy and equal opportunity from social issues like gay marriage, gives Democrats a progressive tilt, but they never stopped the Reagan Counter-revolution. Democrats collaborated on tax-cuts for the wealthy, and adopted corporate-friendly policies like repealing Glass-Steagall, promoting NAFTA and now the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Obama is as much involved in updating of the new Democrats as his irascible associate, Rahm Emanuel, current mayor of Chicago, presiding over the most public school closings (largely in poor neighborhoods) of any large city, a part of "austerity" politics: cutting government's social services.

It's no accident that Obama proposes to cut Social Security benefits--and other government benefits, as well--by adopting the "chained CPI" measure for adjusting payments to the cost of living. He's the first Democratic President to dare suggest such a thing. It's also no accident that he presides over an invasive surveillance program and is hawkish on drones. By being for progressive social issues, he can get a pass on his surrender to the Military-Industrial-Security-Complex and Democrats can fatten on Defense-related campaign funds. In his political campaigns, despite record numbers of small donors, Obama depended financially on big bucks given by people Democrats used to call "fat cats."

Democrats have been co-opted by the contemporary class of "Roman Senators:" Nader's epithet: "not a dime's worth of difference" from Republicans almost rings true--except for social policy.

We need a democratic revival not based on either of the current political parties. N.B. My paternal family has been Democrats at least since Franklin Pierce (1853).

Plantation America

…is what we're entering. It's why the elites no longer seem to care if people are employed, or desperate. It's why a significant portion of the elite is determined to repeal the healthcare law, now that the Supreme Court has upheld it. The hoi-polloi must be driven down, like the slaves of yore.

Sara Robinson (Alternet, 06/28/12) offers an intriguing theory: the wealthy now most articulate, most politically active, increasingly dominant, are from a different aristocracy than men like FDR, or even George H.W. Bush. They have not, she points out, inherited the Puritan-based values of social justice and noblesse oblige, derived mostly from the Northeast. Instead, like the younger Bush and Mitch McConnell, they inherit their ideas from the plantation aristocracy of the Tidewater South, and ultimately from the even more brutal plantation society of the West Indies.

The plantation heritage emphasizes the 'divine right' of the elite to lord it over their slaves--and everyone else, brutally, if necessary. It also rejects the idea that the elite has an obligation to aid those less fortunate, or the later idea that equality is a good: it's not: it's an evil, in their eyes, to be beaten down (literally). Further, freedom, for them, is only individual, and only realized fully by elites, because they should have the freedom to suppress everyone else.

You could go further back and draw parallels between the Puritan vs Plantation aristocracies to the European feudal regimes vs the latifundias lorded over by the Roman Senators towards (and after) the break up of the Roman Empire. The process of Senatorial takeover parallels our own: yeomen peasantry, urban proletariat, and the middle class were all driven into serfdom, under the control of the few Senatorial families monopolizing all wealth. Anyone not of Senatorial rank was treated like a serf.

In feudal society, there was at least the idea that nobility had an obligation to protect and look after their subjects, although this often degenerated into something more like the late Roman system. Its degeneration led to the French Revolution and the English Civil War, but also to social democracy in most of Europe.

It is the southern, plantation ethos that pervades the Tea Party, or rather, its funders, like the Koch brothers and Karl Rove. They are not constrained by ideas of justice, the rule of law or fairness. The Kochs, for example, believe they have a god-given right to pollute the air, water and land and shouldn't have to pay for the damage they do to anyone else; that's their justification for adamantly opposing any kind of environmental regulation: they call this "freedom."

Looked at this way, the contest between conservative and liberal/progressive, between Republican and Democrat, is a contest between two elite cultures, or tribes. The older, more established northeastern ethos appears tired, and lacking conviction. The brash, southern and western tribe pours its resources into gaining dominance.

It doesn't look good.

Our Debt Trap

The "new" economy: workers have no rights, and are paid a few dollars over minimum wage. They have to pay for an American lifestyle: a decent rental, at very least, a car, insurance and gas, cable and phone, electricity, medical care and food, going up almost as fast as gas.

I have friends who are barely making it, working full time; they're good at what they do, highly valued by their employers, yet they're paid too little to afford the minimal American lifestyle.

Prices go up, although Bernanke tells us we don't have meaningful inflation, that deflation is the danger. Deflation is a danger, not just in the housing market, where prices are marching downward, but in the labor market. Workers are paid less and less, because everything, including rent, goes up--except their wages. The result is that people have less and less money to spend; they economize. In the country, people only drive to the store when they have multiple tasks; gas costs too much for multiple shopping trips, so there is less money as demand for goods and services.

Meanwhile, corporations are sitting on piles of cash, much of it from foreign earnings, and from squeezing more work out of fewer workers. The rise in unemployment (from 8.8% to 9.1%) is driven by labor deflation, i.e. people don't have enough money to maintain the demand necessary for businesses (small and large) to hire more workers.

No tax cuts for corporations and wealthy investors will stimulate job creation when there is flagging demand for the goods and services those businesses sell. No lay offs of public employees (Federal, state and local) is going to create more jobs; the opposite is true; layoffs drive demand downward.

Two policies would create jobs: resolving the housing collapse by allowing people to stay in their homes and renegotiating mortgages based on their homes' current value, and/or subsidizing housing payments. And, government creating needed jobs directly. Our crumbling infrastructure alone indicates that WPA-type jobs would be positive investments in the nation's future. It doesn't matter where the money comes from, but only the Federal government can make a political decision to invest in jobs.

Instead, governments slash jobs and spending, suddenly reducing money available for goods and services. The result is a debt trap. Fewer jobs mean less money being spent. This results in lower tax revenue and higher expenditures on services to the unemployed, which then forces cuts of even more jobs. This self-reinforcing deflation, is a debt trap. Deficits will rise as expenditures are cut; debt will increase as unemployment rises and as people spend less. That's not a paradox, it's how things work.

Rome was caught in a debt trap in the 4th century--and never got out of it. Keynes and FDR found a way out in the 1930's. Why don't we?

Noblesse Oblige

There used to be such a thing as noblesse oblige. I've heard people argue that FDR was its epitome. He was a slightly downwardly mobile aristocrat (they were spending "principle," not just income, FDR lamented). He found empathy for the people out there suffering in the Great Depression, possibly because of his own sudden disability from polio.

Noblesse Oblige makes sense for the elite, FDR argued, although most of his own class disagreed. His argument, the argument of the intellectuals of the New Deal, makes sense today: unless you moderate the extremes of income, unless you make sure the needy are taken care of and unless you ensure that more and more have the opportunity to make something of themselves, you will either have revolution, or fascism. Democracy will die, or be destroyed.

Of course, in the 1930's it was easy to see the alternatives: the USSR and the 1000-year Reich. Today, the elite feel falsely secure: there is no alternative. Communism is dead and Fascism is invisible. Maybe this is what Capitalism Triumphant looks like.

The Nobel economist, Joseph Stiglitz, points out that when a society becomes as unequal as ours, when 1% rule and gain more and more of its wealth--the US today--there is a loss of community. The elite have less and less in common with the lower classes, and reject any need to help them even when they are in dire economic straits. They cut funds to services, which don't serve the elite, like public libraries, Head Start, even Food Stamps and unemployment insurance. And they cut taxes on themselves. After all, it's their money.

The US has a myth of a classless/middle class, mobile society that never really existed; it's now, by income and wealth, the most class stratified of any developed country. Our politics shows that.

While cutting everything else, the elite support the military. Their children won't serve in it, but they can make money on all our military adventures; it's good for business.

The GOP represents the elite rather faithfully, but a good number of Democrats represent them, too, due to bribes (campaign funds) and/or a common class. So far, there are very few like FDR, even among Democrats.

But FDR's argument is relevant: without real reform--and government helping people in need--by creating jobs, for example--the chances for radical revolution increase exponentially. Revolution could be either of the right or of the left, but the elite ultimately lost even with the right-wing totalitarian dictatorships they favored in the past.

Yet, clearly, the GOP doesn't buy FDR's argument.

Most Democrats bought it long ago, but forgot about it.

Protests may be the only way to get even progressives to remember--and act, despite their Wall Street supporters. Otherwise, we'll end up serfs or slaves to the new Roman Senators--until there is an explosion: a Spartacan uprising, or a radical revolution.